Brexit feels like the Berlin Wall going back up and is a culmination of anxiety from the aftermath of 9/11..
Before 1989, there was a period which was referred to by the USSR president (Gorbachev) at the time as 'glasnost' (openness) 'perestroika' (restructuring). Put simply, this was the beginning of the thawing of the ice which had caused divisions between the east and the Western world. His legacy was to leave the world in a more progressive and united state - ironically by causing the break up of a Union which was economically better off than after the break up. Nationalism was seen as a force for good in the aftermath of the break up and self-determination was seen as a positive.
From 1989-2001, the western world underwent what seemed like an unprecedented period of great peace and for the most part prosperity give or take a few recessions (emerging markets crisis).. but since 9/11, the world as a whole has become an increasingly paranoid, isolationist, xenophobic and less wealthier place. Suddenly nationalism started to show its uglier side again (rather like the 30s) and in the past few years in particular, guys like Trump and Farage/Johnson take centre stage riding on the waves of this new found nasty jingoism and more cultured measured globalised politicians like an Obama take a back seat. The media has played a huge part in fanning the flames of this new right wing extremism and it knows that this type of rhetoric sells, it appeals to the disenfranchised white working class and although the internationalist left wing reader finds such papers abhorrent, they can't help but read their papers too .. to see what latest forms of bullshit they can come up with. The Daily Mail thread on this very forum proves the point, other than the Guardian.. the paper I read the most is the Daily Mail.. nearly all my friends, all of whom I would classify as left wing follow a similar pattern. Imagine then the influence the media can wield on the more right wing minded people of the UK/USA.
The referendum result was coming for a long time. This result wasn't two fingers up at the elites, most people have no idea who the elites are and rarely come into face to face interaction with them. This result was two fingers up to all the individuals they don't consider their fellow 'man', the immigrants, Londoners, muslims, internationalists, the financial and legal services sector, economic and political experts. For me there is no doubt that this vote was driven primarily by hate, followed by fear and only the small majority thought that based on a sound economic argument, a standard of living argument... we would be better off outside in the EU.
The question we have to ask ourselves is, do we want to live with people who make votes based on the factors described above.. many foreigners who work here have already spoken about how disillusioned they are post Brexit and want to go elsewhere and that is definitely understandable. But what about us native Brits who are pretty much stuck here.. we can't just 'let them rot'..
I am not saying I feel any sympathy for the Brexit voters but at the end of the day, we all have family members who we can't tolerate and as I talked about in another thread.. my situation was to get out of the situation and focus on my own future. Sadly that is where the analogy ends because we live on a island and we can't move somewhere and leave them behind.. Scotland can, but here in England we will not be able to create a divide in the country.
Politicians need to engage with the white working class in this country. Whether we like them or not, the bottom line is that they're in many ways the heart and soul of the country and if they feel disillusioned, we're less likely to be prosperous and forward thinking as a country. Instead of demonising them and belittling their views, we need to improve their situation, educate their children to high standards.. give them better job prospects. We need to find ways of alleviating fears of immigration and if that is through caps, so be it. Depriving your working class, thinking of them as some sub species of human .. this is not the way to run a prosperous country and in many ways we have allowed 'anti-intellectualism' take hold. We are constantly told that in school results, the white working class perform the worst .. year in year out compared to the working class of other ethnicities. There is a work ethic which is missing there, something amiss in the parenting standards and general life prospects in that class of people. We need to help them (not in terms of welfare but investment), not turn our backs on them. Is it any wonder then that we get irrational decisions when it comes to referendums? where the only information that some people do is through the Daily Mail app on their phone..
The EU needs to take a lot of flak for the result that has occurred. Its stubbornness, the lack of reform.. the way it handled the David Cameron reform proposals pre referendum. It is incredibly belligerent, lacks flexibility and couldn't give two fecks about the concerns of individual nations or peculiarities about particular cultures, therefore adapting its ways to particular nations needs. I also think free movement of peoples is an inherently flawed principle as it should only operate where all member states share a similar mindset (its people like travelling and experiencing new cultures, economies of equal standing, similar cultures/ethnicities). The EU as it was, allowed for disproportionate movement of peoples from poor states to the big western states and England of all the countries in Europe has without doubt been the most affected. When immigrants move to the UK, not many end up in Scotland (10-20,000 is generally the figure of net migration including all migrants) or Wales (9000 net migrants a year). Now if you consider that UK as a whole gets around 650,000 migrants a year and 300,000+ net migration a year.. and 600,000 of those are moving to England, which is 1/5th the size of France and Spain, yet is taking twice as many people as the former.. you can see why there are problems in the British mentality when it comes to Europe. Simply put, England has been badly affected by the EU.. people on the ground can feel it, see it in their everyday lives and they simply don't like it. Subtle immigration fine, but when the nature of your town is changing at the scale and speed it has done.. you can imagine the culture shock for some of these people. We haven't done enough to slowly integrate these immigrants into new communities and educated the natives who live there.. it has led to a huge culture clash.
The EU politicians instead of being butthurt and childish in their remarks post Brexit, need to be the bigger side and offer out an olive branch and do their best to keep this Union going. At the same time they need to look intrinsically at the faults of their model and restructure the migration element so it is fairer. Taking into account the size of a countries land mass, their economy, the nature of their people and also do more to stimulate the economies of some of the poorer regions so that investment and wealth is more spread out. Aim to make Poland an area where others want to immigrate to. There is no point crying for the Polish and the hard work they do here when according to a study in 2013 by the Centre for Research on Prejudice – a professional academic centre at the University of Warsaw – as many as 69% of Poles do not want non-white people living in their country. They can't have it both ways and bleat about the racism and xenophobia of the British. The UK is one of the most historically welcoming nations to migrants post the second world war.. its just reached exhaustion point post 9/11.
There have been faults on all sides, faults on the part of British politicians who instead of safeguarding the interests of the nation, put their own success first.. Blair, Farage, Johnson, Osbourne to name but a few. We then have the media who loves to scaremonger, promote the worst ideals in society and just refuses to ever provide a balanced argument. I blame the Guardian too for never telling it like it is and being too left wing in its views, if it was more balanced.. maybe it could reach out to a wider reader base. I blame the european politicians for not sorting out fundamental flaws in the EU.
Us 'remainers', the so-called intellectual and civilised members of our society feel incredibly hard done by after this Brexit result. It is we who will suffer the most in the immediate aftermath, as we are probably the type of people who love to experience new cultures, have a very internationalist mindset and feel depressed about this regression in peoples outlook in our country. But instead of getting too down and blaming our fellow citizens, we should try and see it from their point of view too.. and seek to improve their situation with the hope that as a nation we can become more progressive. These people you see on Facebook with ignorant views, try and think.. what has made them like this... their parents? maybe they couldn't get a job? some of them will themselves be plain ignorant but not everyone is like that naturally, environmental factors play a big part and remember that Europe has a whole has plenty of its racists and xenophobic people too.. its just that they probably don't get loads of immigrants going into their countries so it doesn't draw as much attention as the English do.
Lets not build a Berlin wall in our nation, dividing our country into two.. that is exactly what guys like Farage want us to do and encourage an 'us v them' mentality.
Before 1989, there was a period which was referred to by the USSR president (Gorbachev) at the time as 'glasnost' (openness) 'perestroika' (restructuring). Put simply, this was the beginning of the thawing of the ice which had caused divisions between the east and the Western world. His legacy was to leave the world in a more progressive and united state - ironically by causing the break up of a Union which was economically better off than after the break up. Nationalism was seen as a force for good in the aftermath of the break up and self-determination was seen as a positive.
From 1989-2001, the western world underwent what seemed like an unprecedented period of great peace and for the most part prosperity give or take a few recessions (emerging markets crisis).. but since 9/11, the world as a whole has become an increasingly paranoid, isolationist, xenophobic and less wealthier place. Suddenly nationalism started to show its uglier side again (rather like the 30s) and in the past few years in particular, guys like Trump and Farage/Johnson take centre stage riding on the waves of this new found nasty jingoism and more cultured measured globalised politicians like an Obama take a back seat. The media has played a huge part in fanning the flames of this new right wing extremism and it knows that this type of rhetoric sells, it appeals to the disenfranchised white working class and although the internationalist left wing reader finds such papers abhorrent, they can't help but read their papers too .. to see what latest forms of bullshit they can come up with. The Daily Mail thread on this very forum proves the point, other than the Guardian.. the paper I read the most is the Daily Mail.. nearly all my friends, all of whom I would classify as left wing follow a similar pattern. Imagine then the influence the media can wield on the more right wing minded people of the UK/USA.
The referendum result was coming for a long time. This result wasn't two fingers up at the elites, most people have no idea who the elites are and rarely come into face to face interaction with them. This result was two fingers up to all the individuals they don't consider their fellow 'man', the immigrants, Londoners, muslims, internationalists, the financial and legal services sector, economic and political experts. For me there is no doubt that this vote was driven primarily by hate, followed by fear and only the small majority thought that based on a sound economic argument, a standard of living argument... we would be better off outside in the EU.
The question we have to ask ourselves is, do we want to live with people who make votes based on the factors described above.. many foreigners who work here have already spoken about how disillusioned they are post Brexit and want to go elsewhere and that is definitely understandable. But what about us native Brits who are pretty much stuck here.. we can't just 'let them rot'..
I am not saying I feel any sympathy for the Brexit voters but at the end of the day, we all have family members who we can't tolerate and as I talked about in another thread.. my situation was to get out of the situation and focus on my own future. Sadly that is where the analogy ends because we live on a island and we can't move somewhere and leave them behind.. Scotland can, but here in England we will not be able to create a divide in the country.
Politicians need to engage with the white working class in this country. Whether we like them or not, the bottom line is that they're in many ways the heart and soul of the country and if they feel disillusioned, we're less likely to be prosperous and forward thinking as a country. Instead of demonising them and belittling their views, we need to improve their situation, educate their children to high standards.. give them better job prospects. We need to find ways of alleviating fears of immigration and if that is through caps, so be it. Depriving your working class, thinking of them as some sub species of human .. this is not the way to run a prosperous country and in many ways we have allowed 'anti-intellectualism' take hold. We are constantly told that in school results, the white working class perform the worst .. year in year out compared to the working class of other ethnicities. There is a work ethic which is missing there, something amiss in the parenting standards and general life prospects in that class of people. We need to help them (not in terms of welfare but investment), not turn our backs on them. Is it any wonder then that we get irrational decisions when it comes to referendums? where the only information that some people do is through the Daily Mail app on their phone..
The EU needs to take a lot of flak for the result that has occurred. Its stubbornness, the lack of reform.. the way it handled the David Cameron reform proposals pre referendum. It is incredibly belligerent, lacks flexibility and couldn't give two fecks about the concerns of individual nations or peculiarities about particular cultures, therefore adapting its ways to particular nations needs. I also think free movement of peoples is an inherently flawed principle as it should only operate where all member states share a similar mindset (its people like travelling and experiencing new cultures, economies of equal standing, similar cultures/ethnicities). The EU as it was, allowed for disproportionate movement of peoples from poor states to the big western states and England of all the countries in Europe has without doubt been the most affected. When immigrants move to the UK, not many end up in Scotland (10-20,000 is generally the figure of net migration including all migrants) or Wales (9000 net migrants a year). Now if you consider that UK as a whole gets around 650,000 migrants a year and 300,000+ net migration a year.. and 600,000 of those are moving to England, which is 1/5th the size of France and Spain, yet is taking twice as many people as the former.. you can see why there are problems in the British mentality when it comes to Europe. Simply put, England has been badly affected by the EU.. people on the ground can feel it, see it in their everyday lives and they simply don't like it. Subtle immigration fine, but when the nature of your town is changing at the scale and speed it has done.. you can imagine the culture shock for some of these people. We haven't done enough to slowly integrate these immigrants into new communities and educated the natives who live there.. it has led to a huge culture clash.
The EU politicians instead of being butthurt and childish in their remarks post Brexit, need to be the bigger side and offer out an olive branch and do their best to keep this Union going. At the same time they need to look intrinsically at the faults of their model and restructure the migration element so it is fairer. Taking into account the size of a countries land mass, their economy, the nature of their people and also do more to stimulate the economies of some of the poorer regions so that investment and wealth is more spread out. Aim to make Poland an area where others want to immigrate to. There is no point crying for the Polish and the hard work they do here when according to a study in 2013 by the Centre for Research on Prejudice – a professional academic centre at the University of Warsaw – as many as 69% of Poles do not want non-white people living in their country. They can't have it both ways and bleat about the racism and xenophobia of the British. The UK is one of the most historically welcoming nations to migrants post the second world war.. its just reached exhaustion point post 9/11.
There have been faults on all sides, faults on the part of British politicians who instead of safeguarding the interests of the nation, put their own success first.. Blair, Farage, Johnson, Osbourne to name but a few. We then have the media who loves to scaremonger, promote the worst ideals in society and just refuses to ever provide a balanced argument. I blame the Guardian too for never telling it like it is and being too left wing in its views, if it was more balanced.. maybe it could reach out to a wider reader base. I blame the european politicians for not sorting out fundamental flaws in the EU.
Us 'remainers', the so-called intellectual and civilised members of our society feel incredibly hard done by after this Brexit result. It is we who will suffer the most in the immediate aftermath, as we are probably the type of people who love to experience new cultures, have a very internationalist mindset and feel depressed about this regression in peoples outlook in our country. But instead of getting too down and blaming our fellow citizens, we should try and see it from their point of view too.. and seek to improve their situation with the hope that as a nation we can become more progressive. These people you see on Facebook with ignorant views, try and think.. what has made them like this... their parents? maybe they couldn't get a job? some of them will themselves be plain ignorant but not everyone is like that naturally, environmental factors play a big part and remember that Europe has a whole has plenty of its racists and xenophobic people too.. its just that they probably don't get loads of immigrants going into their countries so it doesn't draw as much attention as the English do.
Lets not build a Berlin wall in our nation, dividing our country into two.. that is exactly what guys like Farage want us to do and encourage an 'us v them' mentality.